Rec's on this one room design...

Howdy everyone, First of all, great Forum, helped me build a great little project studio, thanks to all. Next, we've just moved the band to a new practice space (see below) from our old 60'x30'x12' warehouse with no heat ! New Room: 20'x30' x12' ceiling All drywall (ack) Has great heat (yah) next to a glassblower's studio ! We'd like to set up to track demo's and rehearsals. Anyone got any comments on the design below ? (sorry for the weak autocad attempt) I've got some funky diffusers for over the mix position. We'll track drums, 3 horns, 2 keyboards, bass, and a couple guits in there so space is a little tight. Thanks for any input, (the drawing is to scale) Pac

FYI- gear list if it helps... Mackie 24/8 bus Mackie 824 nearfields Ns-10's Various outboard stuff Going to hard disk and sometimes a 1" 16 track tascam

Take a look around and study up, visit the SAE site http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html As it stands all you have is a rectangular nightmare of a room. You have enuff space to build a nice control room and live room and an ISO booth. :)

Thanks Giles... but we already have a separate recording facility... My post is for recs on our practice space... Reread the original post: "First of all, great Forum, helped me build a great little project studio, thanks to all. " and "We'd like to set up to track demo's and rehearsals. Anyone got any comments on the design below ? " I know the room needs serious help to do any real tracking, and it's not meant for that purpose. I was looking for any advice on setting up the space to get a decent sound for tracking demo's and practices. Stuff like: .."setting up in a corner is better for reducing early reflections from parallel side walls, just watch out for bass build up in the corner" Thanks tho, Anyone else got any ideas or experiences they'd like to share? bo

I apologize you missed my point in my post. If you look around the SAE forum things such as equipment placement for optimum results are covered, not just construction of a site. I looked at your diagram and notice how you have your room set up. So based on the fact that you are doing demos which to me is a misnomer. Why do a Demo when you can cut a project. Seems like a waste of resources to merely experiment, but that is my opinion and not subject to review. So back to your goal. So far as I see you are in a position to do the home recording in a box setup. As sound is not important to you, why bother with suggesting equipment placement. I have cut many a "DEMO" in my day in a back office of a building with only a couple of ADATs a mixer and a mic in another room surrounded by auralex foam. not ideal, but hey it's just a "DEMO" And I would like to offer that you already know the issue you will deal with (Bass buildup in a corner so you better wear some cans you know intimately) What you have is adequate for your goal. Sorry If I seemd to have missed your original point.

Watcha Tracking? Seems to me you could also consider of more centered in the room mix position because the room has good volume. Unless it would interfere with 5-6 Musicians etc. Best, Dave :lol:

Dave et all, Thought about the central console idea and it seems that there is not enough room. Communication might be a bit tough over all the equipment. I had a crazy thought that i could raise the floor around a central mix position and then everyone could see over the lcd's and such. Maybe in the future... what we really want is Peter Gabriel's setup: http://realworldstudios.com/ For now I came up with the solution of creating a three sided symetrical box near the closet end of the warehouse. At least with this I know I'm getting the same reflections from both sides and deal with that with absorption and diffusion. The big issue now is dealing with the drywalled ceiling and the reverb from it. Spent yesterday making mid/high absorbers/diffusers out of acoustic 2'x4' ceiling tiles and door core. Also going to experiment with the rectangular bags of recycled newspaper insulation as extra bass traps, they weigh a good 40 lbs, so mass is not a problem. Going to cover them in fabric and use them as portable traps. (also good for holding down gobos) Giles, We do care about the sound, hence the original question... anyway... As far as tracking - we have 6-8 players and not all make it to all rehearsals so we track the practices and send out CD's with specific mixes for the specific players.... i.e. if the trumpet/keys player is out we can send her a mix both with someone else covering her part and with out someone else covering her part, so she can hear the flavor we're going for. Also tracking this way allows us to grab nuggets of the warm up jams to send to the lead singer so he can edit and create new material in his studio. Just makes for more flexibility- we're running 24-32 inputs through FOH, why not split them to a DAW while we're at it, never know when something cool will happen. I'm going to shoot the room with ETF pre-setup and then after treatment, should be interesting to see what happens. I'll post the results. Thanks again everyone, bo www.ruderockfamily.com